Lin Dan seeded second for Olympic badminton draw

London – Currently ranked World No.1, Chinese shuttler Lin Dan is seeded second in the Olympic badminton tournament as the draw will take place Monday at the Olympic Park.

Across the five medal events – men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles and mixed doubles – there will be a total of 172 players in the draw, evenly split between men and women.

The London Games will witness the debut of a new competition formant which includes group stage and knock-out stage.

The draw will allocate players into 16 round-robin groups of two or three for the men’s and women’s singles events, and four groups of four for the men’s, women’s and mixed doubles.

The 16 seeds in each singles event and four seeds in the doubles competitions were all determined by the Badminton World Federation rankings issued May 3.

This means, for example, that Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia is seeded above Olympic and world champion Lin Dan in the men’s singles, even though Lin has since overtaken Lee in the rankings.

In the singles competitions, the top player in each group will progress to the next round of 16.

In the doubles, the top two pairings in each group will enter the quarterfinals.

The badminton competition will start from July 28 to Aug 5 at the Wembley Arena.